Drinking during pledging?

[jazing]

Keeping the date and time of initiation or crossing a secret

I find this one a bit surprising. I only know of one fraternity at my campus who outright tells their pledges when they will be initiated. As for the other groups, including mine, dates get thrown around and it is called something different, such as a "test" or "reviews", or "etiquite dinners". But the date is given with another name attached.

I for one think keeping the date a secret helps new members concentrate more and not get too overzealous, such as buying stitched letters before initiation.

[MysticCat]

Originally Posted by AlphaFrog

It's that whole "open for interpretation" and "taking things too far" that can cause this to be a grey area.

That's part of what causes it to be a grey area. The other thing that causes it to be a grey area is that different jurisdictions, different schools and different GLOs have different definitions of hazing and different understandings of what constitutes hazing. As Dr.Phil says, some activities that are considered hazing by some GLOs are mandated by other GLOs. One benign example comes up at GC all the time: prohibiting pledges/new members from wearing letters. Some GLOs consider such a prohibition hazing, while other GLOs require such a prohibition.

Obviously, there are some things that just about any group will consider hazing. But when you get past those things to the "gray area," it seems that it can't be said enough at GC that people should comment on what their own campuses or GLOs would consider hazing without making the assumption that everyone agrees.

Originally Posted by jazing

I find this one a bit surprising. I only know of one fraternity at my campus who outright tells their pledges when they will be initiated. As for the other groups, including mine, dates get thrown around and it is called something different, such as a "test" or "reviews", or "etiquite dinners". But the date is given with another name attached.

This is standard practice in many if not most of our chapters.